Our Life Long Pursuit of Toys

The following text was picked from the book — Opening the hand of thought: the foundations of Zen Buddhist.

We don’t use the kyōsaku, a stick used in many Zen temples to wake up a sitter who might have dozed off. Since we set everything aside and face the wall, just being ourselves during zazen, we may feel a terrible boredom. If the kyōsaku were carried around, it would become a toy to divert people from their boredom.

For example, someone sitting quietly might hear a person carrying a kyōsaku around and begin to think about how perfect their posture is and why there is no reason for them to get hit, or about how long the afternoon is and how they could arrange to get hit just to pass the time.

It seems to me that we spend all our lives playing with toys. It begins as soon as we are born.

The first toy is the nipple of the milk bottle. When we are a little older, we turn to dolls and teddy bears.

After that, it’s do-it-yourself kits, cameras, and cars.

At adolescence, we move on to sex, and then come study and research, competition and sports, along with earnestness in business and perhaps the search for fame.

This is all just playing with toys! Right up to our death, we exchange one toy for another, and we end our lives having done nothing but play with toys.

Doing zazen means to actualize the reality of life. Zazen is the self which is only the self of the universe, without any playing with toys.

Zazen is like the time just before our death when all the toys have been taken away. Yet, even then, we look around for something to play with, if only for an instant.